Keen to reduce their waste, the organisers of last year's
Rootstock wine festival in Sydney came
up with the idea of distilling the contents of the
popular event's many spit buckets - hundreds of litres of
expectorated chardonnay and pinot and amber wines
and cloudy wines. The result, processed at nearby Poor
Toms Gin, is a fine grappa (some bottled as is, some matured
in cask) tentatively named Disco Pash - because, as
distiller Griffin Blumer quipped, "it's like a kiss from
a stranger in a nightclub". poortomsgin.com.au

Spitting Image

Débuting a brand-new wine at $500 a bottle seems like a naked
play for the wine speculation dollar, but the story of Ao Yun, the
first foray into winemaking in China from French luxury giant Moët
Hennessy, is much more interesting than it may initially seem. Made
from mostly cabernet sauvignon grapes hand-picked from vines
terraced on vertiginous slopes high in Yunnan province, the wine
has a fascinating backstory. An array of challenges ranging from
altitude to access meant that the 2013 vintage, now on sale, was
made the old-fashioned way, the organic fruit hand-sorted and
vinified in amphorae originally made for the Chinese spirit baiju.
Long story short: one of the world's biggest wine conglomerates has
made a wine that might unite the natural-wine crowd and
Bordeaux-loving classicists in their admiration. Or at least those
of them who are willing to part with $500 a bottle. moet-hennessy-collection.com.au

Red China

Over the past 18 months or so, enterprising local
spirits-slingers have raised the bar with their pre-packaged
cocktails. The Everleigh Bottling Co's range of four core classics
is - as you'd expect from this bastion of bartending - flawless and
beautiful; The Aussie Tipple Company range, meanwhile, uses
exclusively local artisan spirits from top distillers such as
Belgrove in Tassie; and the seasonal concoctions from New World
Projects (aka Starward Whisky in Melbourne) are outstanding. theeverleigh.com; aussietipple.com; starward.com.au

High Spirits

Thanks to the invention of the Coravin - a gadget that inserts a
thin spike through the cork and extracts a glassful of wine,
replacing the empty space with inert gas, keeping the remaining
wine fresh for months - an increasing number of restaurants are now
selling rare wines by the glass, and at appropriately rarefied
prices. At the time of writing, Grossi Florentino was offering
10-year-old Sassicaia for $96 a glass, and the Royal Mail was
pouring 20-year-old Château d'Yquem as part of its $250 French wine
dégustation pairing. And Coravin has just launched a screwcap
version, meaning all those fine Australian and Kiwi wines that
moved away from cork from the early 2000s can now also be offered
by the glass. coravin.com

Corker vino

Filter coffee is a staple in speciality cafés, but it can be
time-consuming to make. Now there's a speedier alternative: the SP9
by Marco. It brews coffee like a pour-over, producing consistent
single-serve filters, using your favourite manual brewing device -
a Kalita or V60, say. But instead of having to painstakingly stand
there pouring the hot water, you can press go and walk away - the
SP9 does it for you. "The SP9 allows us to sell more filter
coffee,"says Nawar Adra, owner of Collective Roasting Solutions in
Sydney. "We can make fresh, fast filters from multiple roasters and
multiple single origins, while still having time to chat to the
customers."

Coffee express

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Among the low-intervention wine set, high-impact labels are
making waves. Bottles from Jauma, Momento Mori and Domaine Mămărutá
are works of art in their own right. The prize for most memorable
design of the last vintage, though, goes to Patrick Sullivan's Pink
Pound rosé: the Speedo-clad cherub with a singlet tan on the bottle
is nearly as intriguing as what's inside. patricksullivan.com.au

Designer labels

Adventurous importers Lucy Kendall and Alice L'Estrange of
Cultivar Fine Wines have travelled through the old wine-growing
corners of Chile and brought back treasure: aromatic whites and
fresh reds, rustic and honest, produced on a tiny scale and, until
recently, destined for local consumption. The star style is pipeño,
a light, highly quaffable red made from the old país grape, grown
in 250-year-old vineyards and fermented in large barrels made from
local raulí, a native Chilean beech. cultivarwines.com.au

Artisan finds in Chile

While circling over Seoul two years ago, Danish winemaker Anders
Frederik Steen was horrified to see "islands" of plastic rubbish in
the ocean below. He decided to print "Don't throw plastic in the
ocean, please" in 12 languages on the labels of two wines he was
making with fellow natural winemaker Jean-Marc Brignot for Foxy
Foxy Nature Wildlife wines. "When the bottle is placed on the
table, people start to talk about these things," says Steen. hostwineimports.com.au

Message on a bottle

As we applaud the spread of vibrant, new-wave Turkish cooking in
Australia (we're looking at you Stanbuli and Babajan), we're
pleased to see brilliant Turkish bottles being shipped here by new
importers such as Tan Sümer of Opal Wine Merchants. Wines range
from savoury dry whites and rosés made from ancient local grape
varieties such as kalecik karasi to plush modern reds made from
international varieties such as merlot and shiraz. opalwines.com.au

Turkish delight

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You've custom-roasted your beans sourced from origin? Check.
Hooked up your fancy coffee
machine? Check. Now the only thing standing between you and
opening the doors on your café du jour are the cups by Acme &
Co (no relation to the Sydney design studio of the same name). Jeff
Kennedy, the godfather of New Zealand espresso, designed them from
scratch to tick all the boxes that he never managed to find
elsewhere all in one cup. He must've done something right because
now they're favoured by coffee diehards the world over, and
Australia has by no means been immune to their normcore charm.
What's the hook? "Special coffee deserves special cups," says
Dominick Majdandzic, co-owner of White Horse Coffee, a local
distributor of the brand, "and nothing says special more than Acme
& Co." acmecups.com

In the cup

There's no menu but there is house-made Campari prepared à la
minute before your very eyes with angelica root, cochineal, tonka
beans and other arcane ingredients scooped from apothecary jars.
It's all part of the magic of the bar Ben Fiddich in Shinjuku,
where bartender Hiroyasu Kayama deploys the mortar and pestle as
much as he does the shaker tin to craft memorable cocktails. Soon
you'll be able to pull up a stool at Kayama-san's second bar,
slated to open in 2017 in the same building. Ben
Fiddich, 9F, 1-13-7 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo.

The alchemist

Bored with the 750ml bottle, some winemakers have opted for
retro alternatives. Stuart Proud, of Proud Primary Produce in the
Yarra Valley, and Jordy Kay of Chèvre, now in the Otway Ranges,
both favour the flagon for their fresh whites and very light reds,
while Dudley Brown of Inkwell in McLaren Vale chose the humble can
for his off-dry, extended skin-contact sparkling viognier. Very
retro - Sydney wine merchant Doug Lamb was selling Beaujolais
Hiroyasu Kayama in cans in the 1960s.

Bottling out

Japan's Royal Blue Tea takes loose leaf to the next level with
its mizudashi method. Tea leaves are steeped for up to a week,
creating highly clarified flavours. While the approach resembles
cold brew, the teas are bottled and served like wine at select top
restaurants in Asia. Try the company's Hana bottling at Tokyo
restaurant Den - it's the purest jasmine tea you'll ever drink. royalbluetea.com

High tea

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Where once brewers would proudly show off their stainless-steel
tanks, now they can't wait to take you into the barrel room and
geek out over row upon row of ex-whisky casks and ex-sherry casks
and ex-god-knows-what casks containing slowly maturing beer.
Melbourne's Boatrocker Brewing Co is a leader in the field,
producing an outstandingly complex range of drinks in what head
brewer Matt Houghton reckons is the biggest beer barrel-ageing
program in the southern hemisphere. boatrocker.com.au

The owls didn't align last year when the débuts of both Twin
Peaks' long-awaited third season and Sydney "dark tiki" bar
Jacoby's - named after Laura Palmer's eccentric, tiki-loving
psychiatrist - were delayed till later in 2017. A more intimate
effort from the team behind Newtown speakeasy Earl's Juke Joint,
Jacoby's will feature reboots of tiki cocktails, a tight list long
on pink and orange wines, and a quirky Tropicália-meets-Lynch vibe.
154 Enmore Rd, Sydney, NSW

Tiki talkin'

Two super-premium wines launched this month hark back to the
days of Aussie "claret", a medium-bodied, firm-finish cabernet
blend. The 2013 Vasse Felix "Tom Cullity" ($160), an elegant
assemblage of Margaret River cabernet, malbec and petit verdot, is
named after the estate's founder, the first person to plant a
commercial vineyard in the region, 50 years ago. And the 2012
Yalumba "The Caley" ($350), named after a scion of the winery's
founding family, is a fine, cellarworthy blend of cabernet and
shiraz from Coonawarra and the Barossa. vassefelix.com.au; yalumba.com

Pictured: Yalumba's "The Caley"

The great Aussie claret comeback

Melbourne somm Charlie Mellor has brought a dash of Australian
wine-bar style to London. The Laughing Heart, his late-night wine
bar, restaurant and bottle shop in East London, was unashamedly
inspired by the likes of 10 William St, Embla and Ester. Named for
a Charles Bukowski poem, it has a 300-deep organic and biodynamic
wine list and a menu that spans "kitsch French, regional Italian,
and pared-back Asian" dishes, says Mellor. Rock oysters with a
natural-wine granita to start, followed by cod roe with furikake
and crudités, and Dexter beef rib and Serragghia capers? Now you're
laughin'. thelaughingheartlondon.com

London laugh inn

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Another day, another gin. Okay, so perhaps not quite that many
new brands of gin have crossed our tasting bench this year - but it
does feel that way. And by far the most interesting are those
incorporating indigenous ingredients: Something Wild's super-punchy
Australian Green Ant Gin, for instance, featuring, yes, green ants
from the Northern Territory among the botanicals; or the complex
and perfumed Brookie's Gin, featuring herbs and plants foraged from
the Byron Bay hinterland. adelaidehillsdistillery.com.au

Keep your gin up

He was a hero of the 1960s counterculture, celebrated for his
subversive yet optimistic fiction. It's a decade since legendary
novelist Kurt Vonnegut died, and in his birthplace of Indianapolis
they're marking the occasion with a year of events and the opening
of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Fans can make a pilgrimage
to landmarks such as the massive Vonnegut mural overlooking one of
Indy's hip cultural districts, and dine at Bluebeard, named after
his 1987 novel. Thirsty for more? Eleven city bars have created
Vonnegut-inspired cocktails full of references to dark characters
and Vonnegutian plots. vonnegutlibrary.org